Monkey Business

GorillapodAfter enough struggling to hold my digicam steady in low light conditions I decided it was time to get me a mini tripod. A search of the web led me down the usual paths and uncovered the usual suspects. I then zeroed in on low cost ones and got a couple of under ten dollar ones with little flexible legs that seemed like they might fit the bill. I don’t know how I got there, I can’t for the life of me replicate the search, but I ended up at Joby.com. Behold! Gorillapod. If you order one right from the maker right now, they offer free Fedex Ground shipping. If you use the coupon code “GorillapodLOVE” during checkout you can 10% off too, so the unpacked version comes to under $20 delivered.

Played a little practical joke on a co-worker (Hi Mark) and he liked it so well he, with my help, is going to spring it on his wife (sure hope she doesn’t read this.) I got it from “The Banterist” – Your New Monkey. When he opened his he was disappointed that it didn’t have the promised refrigerator magnet, so I made one up for inclusion of version 2 of the joke. Click on the “LOOK! There?s more!” link to see my magnet art.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 420

Why?

At ASCO both 1st shift assembly and fabrication workers starts work at 7:00 AM. One manager also starts his business day at 7:00 AM. When he comes in a little before the hour he parks where ever he can, along with the bulk of the other employees. Our small 3rd shift gets off work at seven and after about 15 minutes they’ve cleared out of the front couple of rows in the parking lot.

Donna and I start our work day at 7:30 and we always get there around 7:15-7:20. This means on most days as we pull into the lot we see said manager as he walks back out of the building, goes over to his car and moves it to a parking spot in the front row as close to the door as possible.

Why?

So at the end of the day he can get out faster? Nope. When he leaves work there are maybe a half dozen other office types leaving at the same time, no crowd. Plus the close to the door spots have a longer route out of the lot because they have to travel the whole length of a row before turning towards the exit.

So he doesn’t have to walk so far to get into his car? Nope. Maybe that is true for that final trip, but what about the whole *extra* trip out and back to move the car?

So why?

Doesn’t he know that every time he starts his car he is causing extra engine wear? By some estimates those cold starts account for 60% of all engine wear. What about the extra gas burned? the wear and tear on the door locks, ignition switch, gear lever, etc.

He is not the only one who pulls these kinds of parking lot stunts either. There are probably a half dozen hourly employees that rush to their cars at breaks and lunch so they can move up closer to the door if one of their fellow employees has left a spot open because they had to leave the building for some reason. Even if it is 20 feet because the spot is in front of them one row.

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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 420

I’m Glad I Brought Him In

A woman and a baby were in the doctor’s examining room, waiting for the doctor to come in for the baby’s first exam.

The doctor arrived, and examined the baby, checked his weight, and being a little concerned, asked if the baby was breast-fed or bottle-fed?

“Breast-fed,”she replied.

“Well, strip down to your waist,” the doctor ordered.

She did. He pinched her nipples, pressed, kneaded, and rubbed both breasts for a while in a very professional and detailed examination.

Motioning to her to get dressed The doctor said, “No wonder this baby is underweight. You don’t have any milk.”

“I know,” she said, “I’m his Grandma, but I’m glad I brought him in.”

My What Ugly Teeth You Have…

Mean MouthBack somewhere around 2000 I added some funky “Alley Gator” plastic teeth to the 95 Miata. When I traded the car in in November of 2003 I pulled the teeth out and gave them to a fellow Miata Clubber to use or trash as he saw fit. I also gave him the silly “Wabbit” teeth I bought in 2002 and had on the car for all of a month or so.

A couple three weeks ago some one on the Miata Forum was looking for a set of the rabbit teeth and I asked John if he still had them. Sure enough, they were still tucked away in a dusty corner of his garage. He gave them back to me and I mailed them off to the fellow for just the cost of postage. I guess while he had teeth on his mind John broke down and installed the alligator teeth on POS, his highly specialized race car (shown above in a recent hill climb event.)

That reminds me, it is October and Halloween is coming soon, time to put the vampire teeth on the Emperor.

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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 418

47,000 Piles Of Horse Poo

At least that is what it seemed like on our morning walk in Hitchcook Woods this morning after last week’s walk along a human only trail out west. Because we got a late start (after 10:00 AM) we had to share the woods with a half-dozen people walking dogs and a third of a dozen horseback riders. I took a couple pictures that I need to look at for the October addition to the Hitchcock Woods 2006 gallery.

We went out shopping at the mall this afternoon. Donna needs new shoe laces for her hiking boots and I wanted to get a Detroit Tigers ball cap to wear to work tomorrow just to rib my Yankee loving manager. We didn’t buy either. We forgot to measure how long Donna’s laces were, so we didn’t take a chance on getting some too short or too long. The only Detroit hats we could find were of the fitted variety and they were $30. That was too much for a hat that I’d probably only wear once, fifteen would have been just about right.

We went to a local church’s Chocolate Festival yesterday. Donna likes to bid on some of the stuff at their silent auction and I like to pick some of their used books. She didn’t win anything and I got 4 books and she one, for 5 books it cost a whopping $3. I picked up one book, In Her Shoes, because the title sounded familiar. Oh, yeah, its a movie with Cameron Diaz or somebody (its in the Netflix queue right now.) I opened the book at random and started reading, hey, this is pretty funny stuff, so I bought it. I also bought a second book by the same author Jennifer Weiner.

The Emperor snicked past 47,000 miles this morning on the way to our walk in the woods.

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I’m A Tigers Fan

Although baseball season ended for me in the middle of September when the FRS were eliminated from post season play, I still keep my eye on the playoffs. I didn’t even need Tommy Lasorda and his little girl organist to come to my house to convince me to watch. It is kind of fun to watch this year with the Red Sox not in it, because it is good pressure packed baseball in which I have no gut wrenching emotional attachment to.

If you live anywhere near a place were there is heated rivalry in professional or college sports you have no doubt seen the bumper sticker that reads: “I root for two teams. My team and anyone who is playing my teams rival.” I don’t have one of those stickers, but when it comes to baseball playoffs I’m definitely rooting for whoever is playing the Yankees. The Red Sox fan in me won’t let me do this too openly, but believe me when I say I’ve been sitting on my couch silently cheering on the Detroit Tigers.

Today I got a treat when those Tigers eliminated the Yankees from the 2006 playoffs. I may go out and buy a baseball cap with an Old English ‘D’ on it to wear into work on Monday.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 410